USB Drive Seriously Messed Up!!!

[knmcnulty]

I'm in the process of switching distros on my Acer One; I've been using Fedora for a few months, and I really would like to try something new. I've got an 8 gb HP pendrive that I was dumping all of my important stuff onto and then emptying onto the pc (which is running Windows 7--it's our "office" computer, and I'm the only one in the house who uses Linux). Anywho, I got everything transferred over, formatted my pendrive to ready it for Madriva Seed, and I get it plugged in to go. Being that I'm using a crap-all netbook, sometimes distros get stuck when installing. Mandriva didn't seem to want to go, so I took the drive out to reformat and try something else. This is when I entered into the Twilight Zone (or maybe into the zone of I don't know what I'm doing--I am a noob for the most part, but one who at least tries). This is a three month old drive, by the way. So, long story short, now when I plug the drive in, it pops open two New Volume windows. One says the free space is 688.6 mb with nothing on it. The other says 1004.4 kb of free space with nothing on it. I'm completely clueless. And ideas or help would be super!

[knmcnulty]

I just wanted to reply to myself that I am following the instructions on this site that I can't post a link to apparently:
labtestproject.com/using_linux/partition_hard_disk_using_fdisk_command_on_linux_f edora_system]Partition Hard Disk using fdisk command on Linux Fedora system | Linux Windows Install Setup Configuration Project

And here's the output showing the problem. I can see my stupid usb drive and the hidden space, so hopefully I can get it back without breaking anything too much!

[kristin@kristinlinux ~]$ su
Password:
[root@kristinlinux kristin]# tail -20 /var/log/messages
Jul 11 23:46:08 kristinlinux udevadm[3967]: the program '/usr/sbin/gpartedbin' called 'udevsettle', it should use 'udevadm settle <options>', this will stop working in a future release
Jul 11 23:46:12 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 5
Jul 11 23:46:12 kristinlinux gnome-keyring-daemon[2131]: removing removable location: volume_uuid_B147_5B7F
Jul 11 23:46:12 kristinlinux gnome-keyring-daemon[2131]: removing removable location: volume_uuid_B24F_17E1
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=03f0, idProduct=3307
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: Product: v125w
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: Manufacturer: HP
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 3S9A172C0017
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 11 23:46:24 kristinlinux kernel: scsi5 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access HP v125w 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 15654848 512-byte hardware sectors: (8.01 GB/7.46 GiB)
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sdb: sdb1 sdb2
Jul 11 23:46:29 kristinlinux kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[root@kristinlinux kristin]# fdisk /dev/sdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 7643.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 8015 MB, 8015282176 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7643 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3b0150e3

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 691 691 1024 1 FAT12
/dev/sdb2 * 1 690 706559+ 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Command (m for help):

[knmcnulty]

I fixed it! I really didn't think I would be able to get it fixed, but I did indeed. Thanks me! (If anyone wants the steps, let me know. I would happily post them here.)

[nujinini]

Hi!

Congrats!

So how where you able to fix it please?

[knmcnulty]

Thanks! I'm pretty dang excited about it.

I'll try to explain the best I can. All in root, obviously.

First I had to verify the name of the external usb hard drive
tail -20 /var/log/messages

Mine was sdb, which I would guess most people's would be.

Then, I had to use the fdisk command fdisk /dev/sdb to partition it once I saw that my space was hiding in a hidey hole in this line:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 691 691 1024 1 FAT12
/dev/sdb2 * 1 690 706559+ 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS

And I could also see the drive had indeed partitioned into two.

Hit 'p' to display the existing partition.

Then I had to 'd' to delete both of the partitions I had going on there. It will prompt you for a number to delete; in my case it was 'd' followed by '1' and then 'd' followed by '2.'

After you delete the partitions, you need to create a new one. So 'n' does that for you, followed by the number of partitions '1' for the primary partition, followed by the number of that default value or size of the partition (it will show up once you strike '1' so that you know what the exact value should be. Mine was '70000-something???' (Sorry, I can't remember exactly, but it will be there.)

Use 'p' to verify that the partition was created.

Then use 'w' to write the partition, otherwise you'll be doing this all over again when you exit fdisk.

Next you're going to verify that the partition is write to disk:
fdisk -l /dev/sdb

And finally, if you're like me, you need to format it so that it can be used in both Linux and Windows with the vfat file system (I'm not sure how to format it to a different file system in the same way).

Apparently there are a lot of different ways to do this. I just used this command (and I can't recall if I ejected the drive first or not, so if it doesn't work for you, try ejecting it):
mkfs -t vfat -v /dev/sdb1

Then verify the change:
fdisk -l /dev/sdb

And that should be it! Hopefully this will help somebody!

(Cool forum, by the way. I'll be sure to visit again!)